Open Source LF Networking Projects Enter the Commercialization Phase, Supported by a Growing Global Ecosystem

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- LF Networking (LFN), which facilitates collaboration and operational excellence across open networking projects, today announced a shift among open source networking from community to commercialization.  Concurrently, the project announced the induction of OpenSwitch (OPX) Networking Operating System into the LFN project portfolio and new Silver members Globe Telecom (operator end user) and Sterlite Technologies (STL).

Enabled by Linux Foundation Networking projects and adjacent communities, the industry is experiencing a sea change as more organizations leverage open source building blocks. Recent examples include increased adoption and production deployments of ONAP from leading carriers and vendors, a proliferation of deployable open source networking and edge blueprints, the growing number of OPNFV-verified commercial solutions via the OVP program, and a selection of networking eLearning courses, among others.

"Open source is driving business deals across the networking industry," said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Edge and IoT, the Linux Foundation. "The stalwart developer communities who worked so hard to evolve the future of networking have won. With the advent of 5G, Edge, AI/ML and more, Linux Foundation project ecosystems enable real commercial advancement."

Automated Testing and Compliance Goes Commercial

Demonstrating the readiness of availability of commercial NFV products and services, LFN's open source, community-led compliance and verification program (OPNFV Verification Program, or 'OVP') has, to date, verified 11 commercial products, with more underway. Using OPNFV and ONAP components, OVP combines open source-based automated compliance and verification testing for multiple parts of the NFV stack specifications established by ONAP, multiple SDOs such as ETSI and GSMA, and the LF Networking End User Advisory Group (EUAG). Leveraging these requirements improves time-to-market, reduces costs, and enhances the overall quality of NFVI and VNF deployments. More details on OVP, including how to get involved, are available here.

Learn more about OVP in the upcoming webinar, "How the OPNFV Verification Program (OVP) Can Boost VNF Interoperability," hosted by SDxCentral on Tuesday, October 22 at 10:00 am PT: https://www.sdxcentral.com/resources/sponsored/webinars/linux-foundation-opnfv-verification-program-boosts-vnf-interoperability/

LF Networking Ecosystem Enables Commercial Support

In addition to automated testing and compliance and interoperability efforts, LF Networking project communities increasingly enable commercial support and adoption:

• New Networking Training Courses. The Linux Foundation offers a robust catalog of free and paid eLearning networking courses to help individuals develop highly marketable skills in open source networking. Recent additions to the portfolio include Business Considerations for Modernizing Networks for 5G, IoT and AI and Open Infrastructure to Support the 5G Transition.

• FD.io is becoming the world's packet processing data plane for secure network infrastructure applications. Its newest version - Release 19.08 - provides significant additions, enhancements to the Vector Packet Processing's (VPP) network stack, host stack, and management infrastructure. This furthers VPP's breakthrough packet processing performance, and strengthens ease of deployment and manageability-- driven by the demands of growing commercial adoption.

• OpenDaylight Sodium is now available. The world's most mature open source SDN controller remains commercial-ready with new features for use cases such as WAN connectivity and routing and virtual networking in cloud and edge environments. Sodium also adds stability and scalability enhancements, and performance and memory optimizations.

• ONAP and OPNFV are driving commercial solutions not only through increasing deployments (ONAP Dublin), but in powering Compliance and Verification (OVP) and broadly collaborating on the Common NFVI Telco Taskforce (CNTT).

• OpenSwitch (OPX) Networking Operating System project, an open source Linux-based network operating system (NOS) solution based on disaggregated design for OCP-compliant hardware and virtual machines, is inducted into the LFN project portfolio.
  
  "We believe the charter of LFN in harmonizing various networking open-source projects to provide a complete stack is essential," said Joe Ghalam, OPX TSC Chair and Distinguished Engineer at Dell EMC By joining LFN, the community will benefit from this harmonization, and we look forward to accelerated innovation in the core OS."

• LFN welcomes new leading global organizations to the project as Globe Telecom and STL join as Silver members.

• Tungsten Fabric 5.1 includes new feature enhancements to support high-performance networking and cloud-native environments, including container service chaining. It supports Kubernetes 1.12, OpenShift 3.11, OpenStack Ocata (and newer), and VMware vCenter 6.7, as well as AWS and Azure workloads.

Innovation on Display

A demonstration of OVP in action will be prominently featured onsite at Open Networking Summit (ONS) Europe, September 23-25, in Antwerp, Belgium. Visitors will  learn about the three verification tracks—NFVI, VNFs based on requirements from the ONAP community, and test labs.

Additional demonstrations will come from across LFN's growing community ( 100+ members with ~70 percent of the world's mobile subscribers) and adjacent open source groups engaged in collaborative technical work, which enables the shift into commercialization.

Booth demonstrations will feature a range of projects (including ONAP, Tungsten Fabric, DPDK, OPX, PNDA, Kubernetes, OpenStack, and more), use cases (TransportPCE, Closed-Loop Automation, 5G Slice Service Provisioning, Intent-Based Networking), technologies (AI, cloud native networking, SDN, 5G) and organizations (AT&T, China Mobile, Codilime, Dell Technologies, Ericsson, Gradiant, Huawei, Intel, Nokia, Orange, SUSE, Tencent, Vodafone, and more). For more details on the full demo lineup, visit the LF Networking blog or see detailed descriptions of each demo.  

ONS attendees are encouraged to stop by the LFN booth to witness demonstrations first-hand. Registration is still open, and Day and Hall Pass options starting at just $275 US are still available: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/open-networking-summit-europe-2019/register/

About the Newest Members

Globe Telecom is a leading full service telecommunications company in the Philippines, serving the needs of consumers and businesses across an entire suite of products and services including mobile, fixed, broadband, data connections, internet and managed services.  Its principals are Ayala Corporation and Singtel who are acknowledged industry leaders in the country and in the region. For more information, visit www.globe.com.ph.  Follow on Twitter: http://twitter.com/talk2Globe and Facebook: http://facebook.com/GlobePH.

"Joining the Linux Foundation Networking signifies that Globe Telecom is serious about taking control of our own destiny through the use of open source packages for SDN/NFV, network automation and 5G to reduce vendor lock-ins, better customizability, rapid innovation, shorten time-to-market and lower our cost to serve. Together with the foundation, we hope to drive our industry towards a truly open SDN/NFV ecosystem." Gil Genio, CTIO, Globe Telecom, Inc.

STL is a global leader in end-to-end data network solutions. It designs and deploys high-capacity converged fibre and wireless networks. With expertise ranging from optical fibre and cables, hyper-scale network design, and deployment and network software, its industry's leading integrated solutions provider for global data networks. For more information, please visit https://www.stl.tech/ STL.

"STL is committed to the development of a disruptive networking ecosystem with PODS, our programmable, open, disaggregated solutions. Our approach reduces the total cost of ownership while offers dynamic personalization to our customers. As a part of this approach, STL is we are extremely pleased delighted to collaborate announce its engagement with LF Networking to collaborate on projects in the area of Orchestration, Edge Computing and AI/ ML that can be deployed over different access, radio and packet optical networking solutions," said Ayush Sharma, Head of Programmable Networking and Intelligence, STL.

About the Linux Foundation

Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world's leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation's projects are critical to the world's infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, and more.  The Linux Foundation's methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information please visit us at www.linuxfoundation.org.

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SOURCE LF Networking